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  • Tribune-Star/Jim Avelis Floor general: Carmela Roeschlein directs the Clay City offense against Sullivan last week.

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  • Tribune-Star/Jim Avelis On target: Brielle Drelick shoots over the Sullivan defense in their matchup last week.

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January 26, 2012

Eels duo could go out with a bang

David Hughes The Tribune-Star

CLAY CITY — Carmela Roeschlein and Brielle Drelick say they have played on the same basketball team every year since first grade, but the 2011-12 girls high school season with the Clay City Eels will likely be their last together.

Oh, they may become intramural teammates while they’re students at Indiana University for the next four years — Roeschlein plans to go to medical school and Drelick plans to seek admission into the IU Kelley School of Business someday — but intramurals won’t provide the same intensity as representing their school on the court.

So they’re wanting to go out with a bang in the IHSAA state tournament in a few weeks.

With the Eels sitting at 14-6 after defeating Northview 46-25 Tuesday night, fourth-year coach Chris Ames and his two leading scorers think they’re on their way to big things.

Roeschlein, a 5-foot-5 senior , and Drelick, a 5-8 senior, have combined with other players to bring Clay City its first two girls basketball sectional titles in 2010 and 2011. Drelick also led the Eels to their first volleyball sectional and regional championships ever last fall.

In other words, a serious winning tradition is under way in girls athletics at Clay City.

“Our softball team has been very compeitive over the last 10 years,” Ames pointed out. “Our volleyball team has made it to the sectional finals several years … and got over the top this past year.

“Hopefully, this will be the ‘Year for the Eel.’ The Chinese New Year started this week and it’s the ‘Year of the Dragon,” but around here we hope it’s the ‘Year of the Eel.’ So we’re hoping for big things… Succeess breeds success and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish here.”

Drelick said some of the attitude change in the girls basketball program can be attributed to the “love-hate relationship” between the head coach and the players.

“I think a lot of that comes from coach Ames,” she told the Tribune-Star. “He came in here with a different mentality. He’s tough on us, but we have the utmost respect for him. We work hard at anything he asks us to do.”

“When we got here as freshmen, we got a new coach in coach Ames,” Roeschlein explained. “He kinda changed the system and, as freshmen, we knew our class would end up being a pretty good team… We knew that by our senior year, we would have big goals.”

Five seniors are back from last season — Roeschlein, Drelick, Allie Miller, Abby Reed and Michaela Riggs — and Ames credits all of them along with juniors Madison Booe and Callie Dayhuff and sophomore Alex Wolfe for much of the current squad’s success.

“Carmela runs the show for us some,” he said. “She’s a four-year starter. She’s helped build the program from the ground up. She can shoot from the outside. She can get to the basket and get to the foul line. In her career, she’s probably shot 75-80 percent from the foul line. So when she gets there, she converts. She leads us in assists … and she takes care of the ball really well for us.

“As for Brielle, she’s another four-year starter and it’s nice to have two scorers who are very dynamic in different ways — Carmela from the outside and Bri from the inside. But Brielle’s really worked on her outside shot … Now that you have to guard her out there more, she gets to the basket. One thing about her, she goes to the basket aggressively.”

The 5-10 Miller also is a fourth-year starter and the 5-5 Reed is a third-year starter.

“Allie’s our lefty and she’s the cerebral player in our group,” Ames mentioned. “She’s like having a second coach out there… When Allie plays well, Clay City plays well.

“Abby is the pit bull of the group. She doesn’t get the accolades that maybe some of the other girls get. She doesn’t score as much … but Abby is a great defender. She can handle the ball for us. We’re not afraid to put the ball in her hands.

“Madison Booe [another starter] is not afraid of anything. She plays undersized [at 5-6], but you won’t find anybody who plays any harder than her. She makes you guard her on the 3-point line. She’s a battler and a scrapper.”

Riggs, Dayhuff and Wolfe are the Eels’ capable substitutes.

Clay City’s losses this season have come against Bloomington North (43-38 on Nov. 8), Riverton Parke (50-32 on Dec. 1), Vincennes Rivet (42-28 on Dec. 5), Edgewood (48-30 on Dec. 27), South Knox (46-41 on Dec. 28) and Sullivan (43-38 last Thursday), so all has not gone perfectly for the once-ranked Eels, who still receive honorable-mention status in the Class A state poll.

“We were ranked at the start of the season, top five maybe,” Ames noted. “When you have as many returning players as we did and with the success we had last year [when the Eels finished 17-8 and advanced to the regional], that [ranking] came about. But you have to prove yourself every night.

“Early on in the season, we were challenged and we didn’t step up to the challenge… On a couple of occasions, we just did not play hard for 32 minutes and that’s something we have to do every night. In some of those games, we didn’t show up to play like we should have. Nothing against our opponents, because they sure did [show up] and they played an excellent game.”

“I think as the season has progressed, we’ve started to play more and more as a team,” Roeschlein assessed. “Against Sullivan, we did a good job of executing our gameplan … As we get closer to tournament time, we’re using each game to get better and better to prepare ourselves for that.”

“We’ve been doing great,” Drelick added from her perspective. “There were a couple games that we would definitely like to take back. But for the most part, we do a good job of executing coach’s gameplan. We have progressed throughout this season.”

Ames said he did see positives in the recent loss to Class 2A power Sullivan.

“It was a great game,” he emphasized. “It was a battle to the end. They did a great job on us defensively and shut us down in the last quarter.”

One of Roeschlein’s most memorable games occurred Nov. 28. That’s when the Eels won at White River Valley 86-53 and she fired in a career-high 52 points, thanks in large part to six three-point plays, four 3-point goals and 12-for-12 marksmanship from the free-throw line.

“It was kinda strange because at the beginning of the game, I felt really jittery,” recalled Roeschlein, who averages about 20 points per game and carries a 4.0 grade-point average in the classroom. “I thought, ‘Oh, this isn’t going to be good.’ I just didn’t feel right. Then I tried a hook shot to start the game and it went in … Then hitting all those free throws really helped the rest of my game and I got a little confidence. It was fun and I could never do it without a team like this. You can’t do that without good teammates.”

To capture a third straight sectional crown next month, Roeschlein stressed that the entire team needs to maintain “a focused mindset.”

“We know all the teams in our sectional very well and they know us well,” she pointed out. “We have to go out there and play hard … take nothing for granted — play defense, block out, get rebounds, do all the small stuff for that big end result.”

“Staying focused … like, it’s easy to lose focus when you get on a roll and things are going well,” Drelick echoed. “You may lose focus on what you need to execute … The biggest thing is just staying mentally focused every single game, no matter who we’re playing.”

“On any given night, if we do not rebound the basketball … we’re going to struggle,” Ames said, adding another possible concern. “A lot of times in the past, we’ve struggled with a big post player from another school. That’s really been our bugaboo the last few years.”

Clay City will play its regular-season home finale tonight against Eastern Greene, although the Class A sectional will be played in the Eels’ gym, starting Feb. 7.

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